Small Strokes Big Oaks

Tim and I viewed our first houses in our house hunt on Monday.  And believe it or not, we found a house that was absolutely gorgeous.  Perfect neighborhood, perfect yard, perfect kitchen, perfect basement, perfect bathrooms, perfect fireplace… it was almost perfect.  Even the price was something we could afford.  We would be left with nothing in our savings account after we put a down payment on the house, but we could do it.

Of course, though, since I am… well… me, I started to freak out when we started talking about actually putting an offer on the house.  What if this wasn’t the right choice?  What if we wanted to move to the city later?  And the biggest question of them all: What if we didn’t want kids?  The house has four bedrooms and a huge yard.  What the heck would we do to fill this house if it was just us two for the rest of our lives?

Cheese alert: I know that the love Tim and I have for each other could fill any space.  But what would we practically do with four bedrooms?

I buried my head in research and budget-number-crunching.  I tried to figure out all of the things that could go wrong and what we would do if they did.  But even that didn’t help.  The question still loomed: What if we don’t ever have kids?  This house will just be too big.

I then started thinking of all of the things I could do to help make this house more affordable.  I could teach summer school (which I really don’t like doing, and didn’t want to do because I wanted to put some serious work into my book and some other projects to be announced this summer).  I could be a part-time freelance writer.  I could get a retail job.  And then, I thought, these are all things that I would think of to do not to make the house more affordable, but to get out of the house so I didn’t have to face it’s emptiness.

I wish I had some great story about how Tim and I had this big, long discussion about this and came to a conclusion that worked for us both and how we were able to hash it out and work together as a married couple.  Or about how we fought about it incessantly and ended up with a happy ending.

We did talk about it for a long time, but it was clear from the beginning of the conversation that we were on the same page: Now isn’t the right time for us to buy a house.  We like our apartment.  We like our routines.  We like being able to take vacations and go out to eat and buy stuff at Crate & Barrel whenever we want.  We’d like to save some more money before we move into a house, and we’d like to take some time to rethink our priorities and what we want out of life.  We were in sync on this one and, although we really did love that house, it didn’t feel 100% right.  So we’re going to wait.

But here’s a nice story for you:  This morning, I said: “So… if we aren’t buying the house, should I teach summer school anyway to make more money?”  And Tim replied: “You’d better not.  You have a book to write.”

I married a good man.